5 Sundance Films You Absolutely Need To See

For 10 days in January – every January, really – the eyes of the film community turn to the snow-capped mountains of Park City, Utah as Hollywood brings its best and brightest to the Sundance Film Festival. Yet, Sundance can be an unpredictable crap shoot. For every Brooklyn, Dope or The Diary of a Teenage Girl, there’s an experimental headscratcher that makes you wonder how certain movies get invited to such a big stage.

Now that the dust (or snowflakes, I suppose) is starting to settle on the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, these are the five titles that generated the loudest buzz. Some will continue to work the film-festival circuit, stopping in Austin for South By Southwest or New York for the Tribeca Film Festival. Others will go on the shelf until October or November, so they can contend for Oscars and other year-end awards. But when these five movies make it to your town, make sure that you find the time to screen them.

Sing Street

John Carney makes joyous, crowd-pleasing, romanticized and heartfelt movies that are rooted in distinct, memorable musical choices. Once you realize he’s the mind behind Once and Begin Again, you get an idea of what to expect out of Sing Street. And yet, even with that knowledge, we were surprised by the outright raves for the director’s latest, which follows an Irish teen who recruits his outcast friends in the 1980s to start his own band. Why? Because of a girl, of course. ScreenCrush says that the film’s "sheer joy and enthusiasm is so infectious it’s very hard to not clap, cry and, yeah, jump out of your seat." Sign us up. The Weinstein Company picked up Sing Street, but so far have only given it a March 17 release date in Ireland and the UK. Stay tuned, U.S. crowds.